Healthy Skepticism Library item: 3315

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Bayer UK Ltd suspended over actions by representatives
Pharmaceutical Journal 1986; 237:821-822

Abstract:

Bayer UK Ltd was suspended from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry for breaches of the code of practice for the pharmaceutical industry by its sales representatives. For two years to 1985 the company instructed its representatives to offer payments to doctors for conducting bogus trials on patients.

Keywords:
*news story/United Kingdom/Bayer/Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry/ABPI/regulation of promotion/sales representatives/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: HEALTH PROFESSIONALS/PROMOTIONAL TECHNIQUES: DETAILING/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: COMPLIANCE, SANCTIONS, STANDARDS/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: INDUSTRY SELF-REGULATION

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Cases of wilful misrepresentation are a rarity in medical advertising. For every advertisement in which nonexistent doctors are called on to testify or deliberately irrelevant references are bunched up in [fine print], you will find a hundred or more whose greatest offenses are unquestioning enthusiasm and the skill to communicate it.

The best defence the physician can muster against this kind of advertising is a healthy skepticism and a willingness, not always apparent in the past, to do his homework. He must cultivate a flair for spotting the logical loophole, the invalid clinical trial, the unreliable or meaningless testimonial, the unneeded improvement and the unlikely claim. Above all, he must develop greater resistance to the lure of the fashionable and the new.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963